Hello to all. New subscriber and message boarder here.
For a while now, I’ve been skeptical about the veracity of Christian scripture. I recently began reading the books of Dr. Ehrman, which validated and bolstered my skepticism and I am now quite willing to call myself an ex-Christian, as without the obligation to hold Scripture as the standard of truth, the holes in Christianity are clearly visible and the structure of faith falls apart.
One thing, though, that I have suspected, but have not found validated by scholars is the non-synoptic gospel attributed to John.
I realize that there is no question that the author of this account did not pull from whatever sources the synoptic gospels did, as there are blatant contradictions. Nor is their question that he demonstrates an anti-Jewish perspective in his presentation of Jesus’s ministry.
However, there are some things that I have come across that really made me wonder.
Firstly, the prelude is heavy with gnostic imagery, what with the presentation of the being that is present with the creator God during creation, the identification of this being as Logos (a hidden wisdom that, when revealed, brings salvation), the Light and Logos being this Jesus guy, and the elevation of Jesus over Moses and the law. The rest of the gospel rips on Judaism, the world, further emphasizes that salvation is found through correct belief, and that the spiritual is better than the physical.
Now, granted, there are non-gnostic elements found in this – resurrected Jesus eats food, is actually dead on the cross, etc. However, since gnosticism has never been one overarching belief system w/ an established creed, I think that the interpretation of this gospel as being an early developed gnostic gospel and/or an attempt to integrate gnosticism and the otherwise “orthodox” view of Jesus.
In my research, I came across a few resources that made me think that my hunch is accurate.
There is a very interesting interpretation of the prologue in the second link:
“The early Gnostics assigned profound significance to the Gospel of John—especially to the opening verses or “prologue.” Just like the opening verses of Genesis, the opening verses of John allude to a “beginning”, but the beginning of what? Orthodox readers would say that John describes the eternal state of the Godhead in the beginning. Thus in the beginning there was the Father and the Son or “Logos” (Word). But the Gnostics saw an entirely different message in the Greek text.
An historic eye-witness who reported on this was the Catholic Father Irenaeus. In book 1 of Against Heresies Irenaeus quotes from a lengthy Gnostic commentary on the prologue of John (1.8.5)[1]. According to this source the Gnostics believed the opening verses revealed nothing less than the very origin of the Pleroma, and also explicitly mentioned the names of several primeval entities or “Aions” which emanated forth in succession from the Father.
These Aions have the following names in Greek and they are important figures in Gnostic/Valentinian myth: Monogenes (also called Arche), and Aletheia, Logos, Zoe, Anthropos and Charis. These are common names in Gnostic myth as reported by Irenaeus and is corroborated in the Nag Hammadi Library [2]. It just so happens that these very names are also mentioned in the opening verses of John.
In John 1:1–18 the following Aions are revealed by name: (as translated from the ancient Greek text of John)
1) the “Beginning” or Arche, in which was
2) the Word (Logos), in which was
3) Life (Zoe), which was the “light” of
4) Man (Anthropon), which also signified and included
5) the Church (Ecclesia), and also
6) Grace (Charis), and
7) Truth (Aletheia)
Arche was also known as the Only-begotten Son (Monogenes), being the first and only-begotten Son of
8) the unknown Father (Jn. 1:18, 17:25).
These Aions represented the primary set of eight, or “Ogdoad”, in Gnostic myth (e.g. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1:1, cf. 3.11.1; Tertullian, Against Valentinians, 7). This primary Ogdoad was in turn the origin of the “Pleroma” itself (the eternal, spiritual realm of the Godhead). John himself received knowledge of this Pleroma from Jesus; hence John wrote of Jesus that “of his pleroma (“fullness”) we have received” (Jn. 1:16) thus meaning that Jesus imparted knowledge of the Pleroma to his disciples.”
Has anyone else found anything to support this perspective?
Robert said
not in the divine cosmological sense of the pleroma with many divine emanations, including an evil demiurge responsible for the creation of the evil material world. That reading of John’s gospel by some of the gnostics does not seem to reflect the actual views of the author(s), in my opinion.
Did you read the articles linked in Agaposopher’s post?
Robert said
that sense of these terms is not really found in the gospel
No, it’s not. That’s because John transforms the synoptic Jesus into a Jesus that conforms with Gnosticism, i.e. a being coeval with the Original Spirit that transcends time and place. He does this by featuring stories about Jesus that are found in the synoptics and combining them with purely Gnostic notions that have no place in the original Jesus narrative. And he got into the canon. Clever chap.
Robert said
So, in addition to some kind of binitarianism, what are the other “purely gnostic notions” that you consider distinctive of ‘gnosticism’? How exactly would you define the term?
‘A kind of esoteric knowledge bringing salvation’, as you put it. I’m no expert so it’s a fair question. The point is that half of John has nothing to do with the synoptics’ presentation of the apocalyptic Kingdom of God. Being born again. I and the Father are one. He who hath seen me hath seen the Father. Believe in me and you will never die. The Nag Hammadi texts are full of this kind of stuff. I hope you agree that they are Gnostic documents.
Personally, I have tended to focus on the etymolgically meaningful esoteric ‘knowledge’ component…
But doesn’t this make the concept so amorphous as to be practically unwieldy? What religious tradition doesn’t have this concept to some degree? Hasn’t the term “gnosticism” been reduced to a placeholder describing all those groups we know existed for which we have little or no primary sources? (And many of whom scarcely resemble each other.)
Agaposopher said
Hello to all. New subscriber and message boarder here.
For a while now, I’ve been skeptical about the veracity of Christian scripture. I recently began reading the books of Dr. Ehrman, which validated and bolstered my skepticism and I am now quite willing to call myself an ex-Christian, as without the obligation to hold Scripture as the standard of truth, the holes in Christianity are clearly visible and the structure of faith falls apart.
Yes, the whole purpose of Ehrman style ‘scholarship’ is to undermine faith. And who becomes the authority if not the bible? Scholars of course. I am old enough to remember scholars telling me there was no King David, no centralize Jerusalem, no proto-Hebrew, no such thing as Jewish DNA, no possibility of large Hebrew populations and no chance of an Exodus at a time when whole nations were on the move. They were wrong, but don’t admit it.
I am touched by how people centuries before Jesus spoke of the suffering Redeemer who would be rejected and who’s coming would end the Jewish nation – despised, outcast, healing the sick, raising the dead, himself crucified and resurrected, and his message going out to the Gentiles. That’s truly amazing insight, isn’t it?
Yes, the whole purpose of Ehrman style ‘scholarship’ is to undermine faith.
That’s not the “whole purpose”, just a side benefit.
That’s truly amazing insight, isn’t it?
What’s truly amazing is that Christians claim to know the Jewish scriptures better than the Jews themselves.
Poohbear said
I am touched by how people centuries before Jesus spoke of the suffering Redeemer who would be rejected and who’s coming would end the Jewish nation – despised, outcast, healing the sick, raising the dead, himself crucified and resurrected, and his message going out to the Gentiles. That’s truly amazing insight, isn’t it?
Biblical reference please.
…there are degrees to which religious groups focus on obscurantist esoteric teachings to the exclusion of everything else, ie, especially moral behavior. Thus gnosticism may be seen as an extreme form of esoteric religious knowledge…
The spellchecker objects when we write the word “gnosticism” in lower case. It prefers us to capitalize it. Robert, wouldn’t your account of Gnosticism result in it being considered more a methodology, even an attitude I suppose, rather than a body of thought? If so I agree.
It was the spirit of the age. A world-weariness had set in. A fundamental pessimism. A feeling of homelessness in the cosmos. That’s what all these groups had in common. (Including Christianity.) Thoughtful and creative and sometimes batshit crazy people sought their hope in a world beyond. I get the impression these groups embraced ecstatic expression with gusto. Doubtless they whispered to each other while imbibing strange potions and staring at the moon too long. Their texts resemble more closely drunken hymns than sober sermons. They are mystics not systematic theologians. This is why classification remains chimeric.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert